Richard P. Saller

Personal patronage under the early Empire

List of tables Preface Abbreviations Introduction 1. The language and ideology of patronage 2. The emperor and his court 3. Seniority and merit: alternatives to patronage? 4. The Roman imperial aristocracy 5. Patronage and provincials: the case of North Africa Conclusion Bibliography Index.

The Cambridge economic history of the Greco-Roman world

In this, the first comprehensive one-volume survey of the economies of classical antiquity, twenty-eight chapters summarise the current state of scholarship in their specialised fields and sketch new directions for research. The approach taken is both thematic, with chapters on the underlying determinants of economic performance, and chronological, with coverage of the whole of the Greek and Roman worlds extending from the Aegean Bronze Age to Late Antiquity. The contributors move beyond the substantivist-formalist debates that dominated twentieth-century scholarship and display a new interest in economic growth in antiquity. New methods for measuring economic development are explored, often combining textual and archaeological data that have previously been treated separately. Fully accessible to non-specialist, the volume represents a major advance in our understanding of the economic expansion that made the civilisation of the classical Mediterranean world possible.

The Family in Italy from Antiquity to the Present

In this important new book original contributions from an international panel of experts offer historical and anthropological perspectives on the Western family, focusing on family life in Italy from ancient Rome to the present. Using methods ranging from symbolic to quantitative analysis, the authors discuss a wide variety of topics, from matchmaking, marriage, and divorce to childrearing, sexual mores, and death.

Tombstones and Roman Family Relations in the Principate: Civilians, Soldiers and Slaves

Tombstones furnish perhaps three-quarters of the entire corpus of Latin inscriptions. Many of these give no more than the name of the deceased, but tens of thousands also offer the historian a few additional details, such as age at death and the name and relationship of the commemorator. Previous studies of the tombstones en masse have focused on nomenclature and age at death. In this study we wish to ask what conclusions can be drawn from the data about the commemorators relationship with the deceased.

Men's Age at Marriage and Its Consequences in the Roman Family

A GE AT FIRST MARRIAGE of men and women is a significant factor influencing the size and shape of families. In a classic article published two decades ago, J. Hajnal drew a broad historical distinction between eastern and western family forms based in part on characteristic marriage age: in western Europe men and women took a first spouse of much the same age relatively late (mid-twenties), while in areas of eastern Europe and the Balkans first marriage for both sexes usually occurred in the teens.1 Since publication of that article, the broad distinction has been refined, in particular with the addition of a Mediterranean type in which men tend to get married for the first time in their late twenties or thirties, a decade or so later than women.2 The typical ages at marriage have various implications for family size and form. Through a computer simulation devised by K. W. Wachter, E. A. Hammel, and P. Laslett, it was discovered that among the demographic variables household size was most sensitive to changes in age at first marriage.3 In regard to family form, the western marriage pattern is associated with the nuclear family, while the eastern pattern has been 4 found in areas where large, extended family households were common. Because of their influence on the shape of the basic social unit, the family, it is worth trying to identify typical ages at marriage in Roman society with as much accuracy as possible and to consider the family of the western Roman Empire in relation to the typology. For demographers female age at marriage is of chief interest because of its importance for fertility rates. For the historian of the Roman family and society, on the other hand, the usual age at marriage for men deserves close attention because of its consequences for the effects of patria

Law and Economic Institutions

The landscape of the Greek and Roman economies is invariably configured of individuals, and also of institutions, the organized activity of production and commerce. This chapter explores, within the ancient world, to what extent was economic growth fostered or impeded by the institutional and legal framework within which the Greek and Roman economies operated. The question may be at least formally addressed through modern scholarly methods associated especially with Law and Economics and with the New Institutional Economics. The chapter provides an overview of the methods themselves, and then suggests several ways in which these methods can be applied to come to a deeper understanding of economic organization and the possibilities for economic growth in the Greek and Roman worlds. Adverse selection is an example of how asymmetrical information can affect entry into a market. A cardinal implication of the Coase theorem is that markets cannot and do not exist in isolation from their institutional context.

Early Rome and Italy

This chapter deals with Italy in the period from the beginning of the Greek colonization through 133 BC. It focuses on the Italian peninsula, touching only briefly on northern Italy and the islands, or the world of non-Roman indigenous cultures. For addressing the question of the rise of Rome to the most powerful polity in Italy and a leading Mediterranean power, the chapter examines the impact of wars, treaties, and the founding of colonies, Greek as well as Etruscan and Roman, reciprocal influences, forced or spontaneous transformations. It distinguishes three major periods: from the earliest Greek contacts with Italy to the middle of the fourth century BC; from the middle of the fourth century, which saw Romes military and political ascent and its rise to economic power, to the Second Punic War; and finally, from the Second Punic War, which caused profound upheavals in the Roman economy, to the period of the Gracchi.

Promotion and Patronage in Equestrian Careers

In general histories of the Principate a prominent place is often given to the growth of bureaucracy, characterized especially by the equestrian procuratorial service. Along with a growth in size, it is said, came the development of an organization regulated by guidelines—the ‘formation of the rigid framework of a civil service, one that was to a certain extent more and more impersonal’. Thus, with regard to promotion, ‘the procurators career had a precise promotion ladder, on which the scale of remuneration conferred a surprisingly modern character’. This view carries with it wide-ranging general and specific implications. It suggests that Roman government of the early empire reached a fairly sophisticated level of rational organization in which friendship and patronage, so vital to the workings of Republican politics, declined in importance, as bureaucratic rules played an increasingly decisive role in the appointment and promotion of procurators. More specifically, it has been thought that once the rules have been discovered, missing steps in individual careers can be interpolated with confidence.

Early Iron Age Greece

This chapter reviews the economic history of Early Iron Age (EIA) Greece. First, it summarizes the evidence, and quantifies some aspects of EIA economic performance. Next, the chapter suggests that 1200-1000 BC saw economic collapse in Aegean Greece; 1000-800 BC saw stagnation; and that recovery began in the eighth century. However, it also argues that the most important economic take-off only came later, around 550-500 BC. The chapter discusses economic structures, before offering the conclusions. Through the 1960s and 1970s Homerists and archaeologists largely ignored each others models of the EIA. In the 1980s a new synthesis formed, seeing the archaeological Dark Age model as valid before 800, but making Homer and Hesiod crucial to the eighth century. EIA life was more wretched than at any time between the rise of the Minoan palaces and the death of Justinian. Greeks died younger, lived in more squalid surroundings, and had fewer goods.

Human Capital and the Growth of the Roman Economy

Over the past 50 years economists have increasingly emphasized investment in human capital as a fundamental cause of sustained economic growth, because investments in education, training and health make the labor force more productive. This paper examines Roman education and training, and argues that Roman investment in human capital was higher in the early empire that at any time in Europe before 1500 CE, but noticeably lower than in the fastest growing economies of the early modern era (e.g., the Netherlands).